The Era Of Big Government Is Back!

In his State of the Union speech on January 23, 1996, President Bill Clinton famously proclaimed, “The era of big government is over.” If anything is clear from the Obama victory, it is that the era of big government is back.

While the pundits pour over the voter turnout results and parse their meaning for Republicans and future elections, there is at least one common thread uniting all of those who voted for President Obama: They all believe in big-government handouts and bailouts.

It’s more than just the nanny state, it’s the sugar daddy state.

More so than race or gender, the biggest divide in the country may be those who embrace the government as sugar daddy, versus those who don’t. Obama’s whole campaign was based on handouts and bailouts. While Governor Mitt Romney tried to maintain his focus on the economy, Obama stressed how much he had given away—and would give away if reelected.

In Michigan and Ohio the president wanted voters to know that he came to the rescue of the auto industry—though for some reason he didn’t blame George W. Bush, who actually initiated the first bailouts.

While Romney tried to talk about getting the government out of health care, Obama wanted to make sure women knew that he provided them with free contraceptives.

While Romney tried to talk about block-granting Medicaid to the states as a way to get control of its unsustainable growth trend, Obama scared many low-income people into thinking they would lose their health insurance.

While Romney talked about reining in federal spending, Obama talked about “investing” in even more Solyndras and shovel-ready projects that aren’t quite shovel ready.

And as Romney talked about growing the private sector rather than the public sector, Obama called for creating hundreds of thousands of additional government jobs, most of which would be union jobs dependent on taxpayer dollars.

Turning President Kennedy’s famous inauguration dictum on its head, Obama’s campaign theme was, “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.” The government—federal, state and local—is doing a lot to for people, and Obama wants to do even more.

Currently, nearly half of the population lives in a household where someone receives some benefit from the government. Of course, many of those are seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare.

Although Social Security and Medicare are financially unsustainable entitlement programs, no one I know on the right considers those seniors as “takers,” to use Romney’s unfortunate word when he referred to the “47 percent.” They paid into the system for decades and they, rightly, believe they should receive the benefits.

Besides Obama’s boasts that he gave seniors more free stuff in Medicare, he simultaneously tried to scare seniors that Romney would take away what they have. It didn’t work. Exit polling showed that seniors age 65+ voted for Romney by 12 points, 56 percent to 44 percent.

Aside: Seniors turned out for Romney in a larger percentage than women turned out for Obama (though only by 1 percentage point). Have you seen any handwringing stories in the media about how Democrats are losing the senior vote in the same way they gloat about how Republicans are losing the women’s vote?

The bigger problem we face was highlighted recently in a Congressional Research Service paper. The federal government spent about $746 billion on means-tested welfare programs in 2011. When state spending is added in, that amount rises to over $1 trillion.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 27 percent of all households received means-tested welfare benefits in 2011. While some may have voted for Romney, I suspect that 85 percent to 90 percent of welfare recipients voted for Obama. (For example, exit polls showed that 63 percent of those making under $30,000 a year voted for Obama.)

In addition, union workers—many of whom think they have a right to expensive, government-funded health care and generous pensions (just Governor Scott Walker)—make up about 12 percent of the workforce, and they strongly supported Obama. Combine welfare recipients and union workers and you have about 39 percent of households.

And what percentage of voters self-identified as Democrats in this election? Thirty-eight percent.